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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30056376">Disappear Like Bruises</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumiere42/pseuds/lumiere42'>lumiere42</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>WKRP in Cincinnati</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>1970s, Abuse, Depersonalization, Derealization, Dissociation, Domestic Violence, Gen, Johnny doesn't quite deal with his issues, Origin Story, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Road Trips, Smoking, Substance Abuse, Synesthesia, a very ugly sleeper van, just so much dissociation, that's totally not gonna boomerang on him in canon or anything right?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:41:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,002</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30056376</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumiere42/pseuds/lumiere42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when your life suddenly unravels yet again? Get out of Dodge, of course. Not like you haven't done it before. The problem is that things tend to follow you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Disappear Like Bruises</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>December 1974:</em>
</p><p>He first starts coming back into his own head in a diner somewhere on the outskirts of Laramie: thin gray light starting to glow in the windows, "White Christmas" bleating away on the jukebox, his elbows on the counter to help keep him from falling off the stool. He doesn't really remember ordering the plate in front of him, the geological strata of a BLT cut in triangles and a pile of fries, but given the context he can assume he did and he starts eating, slowly and mechanically.</p><p>"Coffee?"</p><p>He looks up at the sleepy-eyed waitress with her sheaf of frizzy reddish hair and can't quite remember what to say for a moment. "Um, yeah, thanks."</p><p>She gets a mug from somewhere under the counter and fills it from one of the stained glass pots. He can see her trying not to stare at the bruises on his face and failing. Can't blame her, even given the clientele a diner on a main highway gets you probably don't get that many people wandering in before dawn looking like this, not unless there's a bar on the same block anyhow.</p><p>"White Christmas" segues into that song with the little kid squeaking about a hippopotamus, and he just manages not to groan or make a face. The coffee is a little burnt, but it's helping reel his consciousness back in from wherever it had gone last night, when he'd crept back to get what he could from the apartment and then headed north as fast as he could and he doesn't want to, can't, think about that right now, he just has to be <em>present</em>—</p><p>By the time he finishes the food, the jukebox is groaning out some country song and it looks about as bright outside as this morning's going to get. He waves (with his bandaged hand, forgetting and then wincing) at the waitress, who's rinsing out some pitchers.</p><p>The register's <em>ker-ching</em> is achingly loud. When she brings back the change, she pauses and then she's asking: "Hey, you all right, hon?" in the soft drawl people have out here and yeah, she's definitely staring at his face.</p><p>"Right as rain, sugar." And he smiles even though he knows it looks ghastly.</p><p>Once she's moved down to the other end of the counter and the only other customer (a scruffy guy with a John Deere cap), he considers the change and then just leaves. Not tipping is lousy, he knows, but he has a hundred and seventy-five bucks left to his name at this point, minus what he just spent here, and this will take a couple days of driving and that means gas and food. And finding somewhere to stay in Boise, at least till he gets the first paycheck. Although someone noticing and giving a damn had been nice—</p><p><em>Maybe we can wait till some other time for Philosophy 101, huh?</em> His other mental voice, unbidden, with a snide edge, serrated like running your finger over a steak knife. He has to admit his brain has a point.</p><p>Outside it's cold enough to make you gasp, tendrils of powdery snow blowing delicately across the parking lot. The gas station is only some yards away, its window festooned with a motheaten wreath and little twinkly lights, but he's still shivering by the time he gets in.</p><p>Coffee (it'll go cold in the van eventually, but he's not drinking it for the quality). Map (US 30 should be a straight shot to the Idaho state line, but there's also a whole lot of empty out here and best not to risk it). A pack of smokes. He shouldn't be spending the money, and he'll have to go easy on them because they start affecting his voice after a while and if the gig with KVAC falls apart he's colossally fucked, but God he needs <em>something</em>.</p><p>The bored-looking girl behind the counter doesn't even speak when ringing it all up, which is just fine, he can't manage any chat.</p><p>By the time he reaches the van, he's got the sort of fine full-body shivers he associates with coming down from a really bad bender. He guesses he is, in a way, given the events of the last week.</p><p>For a bad moment he's afraid the door might've frozen shut, but then it pops open. He slings the bag inside and then steps up into it, grabbing the wheel for stability, and sick pain <em>grates</em> up his right side despite the bandage that's supposed to be holding everything in place.</p><p>He just manages to put the coffee in the cupholder and shut the door. Then he leans forward, head against the wheel's cold plastic, and mutters "Fuck," before clenching his teeth and waiting for it to stop.</p><p>Once it's died down enough that he can sit upright again and take a full breath, he fires up the engine and slowly pulls out of the lot, turning left for west.</p><p>***</p><p>He's not sure what's causing these fits of remaining weirdly alert, but sort of...off to one side as his head just kind of fills up with radio static. How much of it is the simple fact of the concussion (the doctor had said to relax and avoid stress, what a laugh <em>that</em> was), and how much is the disorientation you can reasonably expect when the woman you'd pledged to love and honor for life has recently tried to crush your skull with a food processor in a coke-fueled rage. Like, that last part should probably count for something, right?</p><p>Outside, rumpled purple and green mountains rolling past, and a low gray sky spitting intermittent snow. The reflection of the little yarn god's-eye on the dashboard, sailing palely through the landscape. He tries the radio and only picks up two stations—Hank Williams crooning on one, some guy shouting about hellfire on the other—before he gives up on that.</p><p>The occasional weatherbeaten pickup blows by, and once (right after he passes an exit sign reading DINOSAUR GRAVEYARD) a speeding semi that barely makes the steep bend ahead, but aside from that there's no traffic. Not really a surprise, no one would be out in this cold if they didn't have to be. It dawns on him just how unpleasant it's likely to be sleeping in the van tonight. At least he'd had enough sense to grab a couple of the good blankets during that fifteen-minute raid on the apartment, but still -- no, even the cheapest motel room would be too much, plus <em>cheap</em> and <em>highway</em> have a high likelihood of equaling <em>crud</em> and he's not risking topping off this whole mess with getting scabies or something.</p><p>He realizes he can take his foot off the gas on the downhill stretches and just cruise, ready to brake if needed, and that'll save gas and therefore funds, right? For a while it's almost like a game, steering delicately around the sharper turns, and then just as he's passing exit signs for someplace called Walcott his head starts swimming with blurred dizziness again.</p><p>He waits till there's a bit of straightaway, then pulls over and slumps back against the seat, trying to breathe slowly and deeply (pain crawling up his side again, boy having two broken ribs kinda kills any meditative breathing techniques). No sound except fitful wind gusts rocking the van slightly.</p><p>Eventually the feeling of wanting to puke or pass out or both pulls its fingers out of his brain, and shit this had better ease up a bit or this is going to be way harder than he'd thought.</p><p>He's still feeling really weird by the time he pulls back onto the highway, but hell, if he stopped every time he felt weird he'd never have gotten anything done in his life, right?</p><p>***</p><p>He passes over the North Platte River, wide and flat under the cloud-furred sky. Something tickles the back of his mind, something from a childhood fairytale about how evil things can't cross over running water, and that snide voice in his head mutters <em>Well, that should keep Pam away, huh?</em> Except Pam's not evil, he can't honestly say that even after everything that happened, even if that voice is growling something about monsters disguising themselves as pretty girls. Not that there hadn't been a monster, but it came in the form of little bags of white powder, there's probably a Snow White joke in there someplace—</p><p><em>Oh please fucking spare me, Caravella</em>. The voice grates along the edges of his mind, like how cement feels under your fingers. <em>Your problem is you're too damn nice. You should've kicked her to the curb when you first found coke in the apartment. You really thought </em>marrying<em> her would </em>fix<em> things? What are you, stupid? Nah, don't answer that, whatever comes out of your mouth would only prove the point</em>—</p><p>"Shut up." He turns the radio back on—still country, Tammy Wynette—and lights a cigarette on autopilot.</p><p>By the time he's finished with it, he's pulling into a truck stop parking lot outside someplace called Rawlins. Gas, only topping it off to three-quarters. Then he parks behind the main building, where the sounds of traffic coming in and out will hopefully be muted, and searches the glove compartment till he finds the aspirin bottle. Hopefully that'll be enough, in combination with how the pain is somewhere off to his left in a way he can't explain, to keep it in check. He does have some of the really good painkillers the doctor prescribed, but he won't be able to drive after those, so they can just wait for stopping for the night.</p><p>In the truck stop restroom's mirror, he gets the first good look at himself he's had in two days. The swelling's gone down a lot, but he's still got an obvious black eye, and the blue and purple up that side of his face is starting to fade to yellowy-green. The little embroidery of black stitches at his temple isn't so noticeable under his hair. <em>Yeah, this won't be gone by the time I start the new gig, better come up with some kind of story for the KVAC folks</em>—maybe he can tell them he fell off a ladder or something. He's probably lucky she didn't break his cheekbone or jaw while she was at it.</p><p>It'll probably all need some sort of follow-up too, hopefully there'll be someplace in Boise that doesn't charge much and doesn't ask questions, and why is he thinking of that soap-opera cliche about falling down the stairs? And if this latest wave of dizziness doesn't go away—</p><p>He goes back to the van, feeling like the ground is tilting under him. He manages to fetch one of the wadded-up blankets (a garish thing, supposedly Navajo but he doubts it) from the passenger-side footwell, just to have something between his head and the window before slumping against it.</p><p>It's not really sleep that creeps up, more a dense gray fog that's like the very deepest benzo cruises he used to take sometimes living with Buffy back in L.A. So much quiet nothingness, floating like you're in a bag of cotton wool, and the Studebaker's vibrating as it bumps along the road and Dad's humming along with the radio and if it smells like beer and cigarettes in here who<em> cares</em>, Mom will but at least things are kinda quiet—</p><p>Dad's voice, louder and he can't make it out and he just wants to sleep anyway, and brakes going <em>scree! </em>and a hand grabbing him by the hair and <em>Hey, look at me when I talk to you, you little shit, I work HARD for you, HARD dammit, you can FUCKING well LOOK at me</em> and every capital-letter-shouted word is the hand slamming his head into the window—</p><p>He clambers back up into gasping, unreal consciousness. For an awful second he can't remember where he is, and then he sees the back of the truck stop building and a muddy big rig goes trundling past on its way out. He sighs and leans back against the seat.</p><p>The dashboard clock reads 12:55 -- he'd been asleep, or whatever that was, for three hours, not that it had really helped in the end. He lights a cigarette with slightly shaking hands that definitely don't feel like his own, it's like watching some sort of puppet show and it's weird.</p><p>"You know, I never asked to remember that," he says to the empty van. And yes, it makes sense, yes there's a throughline between raised-(allegedly)-by-violent-substance-abusing-man and marrying-violent-substance-abusing-woman that probably needs further examination, but on the other hand can we just please get the fuck to Boise before we start poking at all the heavy stuff?</p><p>***</p><p>After lunch in the dingy truck-stop diner (grilled cheese, soggy fries, his arteries aren't going to thank him for <em>this</em> trip), he heads west again.</p><p>The mountains give way to winter-muted reddish Terrain By Ancient Volcano, the kind of thing you see in Westerns: tablelands and buttes and sagebrush. There's a railroad track running alongside the road here, and once a train comes chugging past, seeming to keep pace with the van for a while before outstripping it and fading into the distance with low whistles.</p><p>Past a town called Wamsutter, a road sign informs drivers YOU ARE NOW CROSSING THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE, everything flows back west from this point on and he's just fine with that, babies. A big looming table rock in the near distance. The snow-dusted furrows of dry creek beds, and at one point, a sign riddled with bullet holes that reads DEAD MAN'S WASH. He starts giggling incoherently at that. <em>First the dinosaur graveyard and now Dead Man's Wash, sure hope the universe isn't trying to tell me something here.</em></p><p>And it <em>is</em> pretty dead out here. Occasionally he spots little banks of lights off in the distance, wrong color and configuration to be towns, probably mining stuff. It suddenly occurs to him he's not sure when he last got the van checked out. Well, it'll just have to do like he is and hold together, this is definitely one of the top 10 hits on the "Worst Places to Have a Breakdown" list he's ever seen and he's just gonna...will it not to happen. <em>Think good thoughts and you'll attract good energies</em>, Buffy would've said, and even if overall she had laid the runway that Pam had come crashing in on later, maybe there was a grain of truth in that.</p><p>Another sign for POISON CREEK, boy the folks who'd named these places must've been cheery people, huh? The Shoshone names were probably better, assuming even the Shoshone remembered them anymore. The god's-eye reflection, pale and sailing in the stillness. The big envelope it had come in last week is just visible among the other crap in the passenger footwell—there'd been a note from Paula sending their new address and the quick <em>Laurie made this and wanted to send it to you</em> postscript, and <em>shit</em> he'll have to call and explain at least part of what happened because there's no way he won't be late with the support check next month.</p><p>"Oh, hi, Paula," he says, watching the white lines roll past. "It's me, your ex-husband. Yeah, just a heads-up, I'll be late with the January money 'cause—it's the funniest thing, you'll never guess, my soon-to-be <em>second</em> ex-wife cleaned out our whole bank account. Oh, and I also had to flee town—I know, not the first time, right?—'cause she <em>also</em> put me in the hospital and I can't stay in Denver with the threat of homicide running round out there. Hey, I know you won't put Laurie on the phone, but tell her thanks and I love her, okay? Bye."</p><p>Hm, if he actually does it that way maybe he can get it all out and hang up before she even says anything. But he should probably insist on talking to Laurie just on principle, when <em>was</em> the last time they'd actually talked?</p><p><em>Oh, are we getting all SEDimental now?</em> <em>Tell me, would Laurie even recognize you on the street anymore? Rant at Paula all you like, my fine feathered friend, but how bad would it've been for that kid to be visiting you the last few years? Just stay away, you'd only fuck it up. Because that's what you <span class="u">do</span>, Caravella, you fuck things up. She's better off</em>—</p><p>He tries the radio again, hoping to drown out that voice, and—hey—a rock station, finally. First it's that Gary Glitter song he's gotten so tired of hearing this year, then Eric Clapton on extra-long play (is the DJ taking a catnap during this, he wonders). By the time it starts shouting ads for seed-and-feed stores and discount footwear, his head is relatively quiet again and he's rolling down into Rock Springs.</p><p>***</p><p>He considers just stopping here for the night—Rock Springs is hardly a metropolis, but there are streets with lots of cars and noise and buildings twinkling with Christmas lights and it's big enough to find someplace unobtrusive to park and not be bothered. Definitely a step up, looney-tunes-making-wise, from the watchful emptiness of the desert.</p><p>The light is getting low in the west. He parks under a streetlamp long enough to check the map. The next town of any size—Green River—is maybe about twenty miles further along, he should be able to get there before full dark and then stop.</p><p>The rock station's signal sticks with him all the way, thankfully, Bachman Turner Overdrive and Stealer's Wheel shouting out of the speakers. Within half an hour he's passing over the Green River (a glimmer in the fading light), and here's the town of the same name, a spiderweb of lights coming on in the distant dusk. And looming up on the right, a truck stop: a pool of oasis-light around gas pumps and shop and diner, a line of big rigs and some camper vans in the lot looking settled in, and yes he can blend in here and not end up getting lost in the town itself.</p><p>He hadn't figured on going to sleep right away, but by the time he parks far enough from the main building that people going in and out won't keep him up, his head is swimming again and he just wants to lie down.</p><p>One painkiller dose later and he's lying on the little platform bed, as curled up as his bandaged ribs will allow, wrapped in coat and blankets and the clothes he'd managed to grab piled around him in a clumsy sort of nest. Pam had laughed when she'd first seen this van, because of the color, and then laughed even harder when she'd seen the inside, with the bed in the back and orange shag carpeting stapled all over everything.</p><p>
  <em>Oh God, Johnny, you brought home the Tropicana Sexmobile!</em>
</p><p><em>It's for <span class="u">camping</span>.</em> She'd been so cute laughing like that that he hadn't even been offended. <em>And it's not <span class="u">orange</span>, it's...burnt sienna.</em></p><p><em>Oh, burnt sienna this!</em> And she'd flipped him off and then kissed him.</p><p>The next time they'd both had a couple days off they'd gone into the mountains, found someplace quiet by a river in one of the state parks, gone swimming and gotten just a little drunk and a little stoned and then gotten most righteously laid in here. He'd been lying here after, staring up at the tree branches visible through the sunroof window, and Pam had rolled over with a big silly grin on her face: <em>Hey, you were right, you know.</em></p><p><em>If it involves hedonism I always am, sweetheart.</em> And that had made her laugh, too, and it was good to hear her laugh. That had been one of the last really good times, actually, maybe about three weeks before he'd found coke in the apartment and known for sure. Confronting her and her throwing a plate at him, the bright shatter when it hit the wall, her calling him a fucking hypocrite—</p><p>And had she been wrong about that? Back in L.A. he'd probably tried everything at least once (except heroin, that stuff had scared the hell out of him, especially after Janis Joplin had died). Right now, in fact, buried deep inside this mattress is a bag with a couple ounces of really good grass, and he's fooling himself if he figures he won't take the first chance, once settled in Boise, to get baked like a tater tot casserole—</p><p><em>Please.</em> The painkiller's starting to fold big black wings down over him, body and mind, and maybe that's why the serrated voice sounds less pissy. <em>Coke's a whole other level of upfuckery, and you never chucked any dishes at anyone, go to sleep.</em></p><p>"Shut up," he mutters, right before the darkness comes up and he does just that.</p><p>***</p><p>Waking up has never been one of his favorite things—gradual ascent into consciousness is only slightly better than being startled awake by something, really—and since what happened it's been especially bad. There should be a name, he thinks, for the few blessed suspended seconds between full awareness and remembering everything.</p><p>It's just light enough outside to see little eddies of snow spiraling across the parking lot. Walking over to the shop pulls the breath out of his lungs like being thrown into ice water. He jumps at the motion in the cracked restroom mirror before realizing it's just his own reflection, good God he looks homeless—and technically he is, he realizes, and is likely to be for a bit longer even after getting to Boise. He should probably just go for the full-beard look for a while, make it look deliberate.</p><p>The diner isn't open yet, so he settles for coffee and one of those mutant-looking giant cinnamon buns. The stoned-looking girl at the counter just shrugs when asked what the weather might be like west of here.</p><p>He starts up the van to run the heater and melt the ice off the windows—with his ribs and hand and the dull pounding in his head, scraping them would just be a new exploration of pain he doesn't want. Aspirin first, then quietly coaxing food and drink down even though he's feeling vaguely sick, staring out at the empty landscape in the direction of the highway. That Eliot poem. <em>This is the dead land, this is cactus land</em>—well, it's too far north for cacti, but damned if he doesn't feel exactly like one of the Hollow Men right now.</p><p>Once the windows are clear and he can't see his breath inside anymore (the slowness of that worries him, if the heater croaks now he'll have a real problem), he turns west again. In this grayish light the crumpled desert looks like no human has ever touched it. The rock station out of Green River fades out too soon, and all he can pick up is a country station so twangy it hurts his ears, so he shuts it off and the weird whir of the wind fills up his head.</p><p>About an hour and two cigarettes later and the land is starting to fold up into the foothills of real mountains again. The town names on exit signs point at what the white folks had come here for a hundred years ago: Opal, Diamondville.</p><p>The highway is winding through valleys now, twisting around mountains fuzzy with real trees again. Nice to see the earth dictating what humans have to do instead of the other way round, he thinks. A curve northwest for a bit, running through another town strung along it for a few miles, and here's another mining name, Cokeville.</p><p><em>Isn't "Cokeville" how this whole mess happened in the first place?</em> The jagged voice muttering in the back of his mind sounds almost amused, if that's possible.</p><p>Somehow he picks up a radio station winding its way through these mountains. Dave Brubeck, "Take Five," dim and gold and maroon, and why does that bring up the smell of eucalyptus—right, the house in Laurel Canyon and Buffy's zillion jazz records. Eucalyptus trees and bright bougainvillea everywhere, objectively the nicest place he'd ever lived in. Piano music. Buffy had overexaggerated certain aspects of her talent, but she could genuinely play a terrific piano. Lying in the hammock on the back deck listening to her play, long glittering strings of notes running through the air and whatever high-octane drink she'd made him running through his blood.</p><p>The only time he'd ever tried coke himself had been at someone's party in Laurel Canyon. It had actually calmed him <em>down,</em> which didn't make any sense. Buffy, looking at him over a glass of wine, that familiar tiny note of something like contempt in her voice: <em>Oh, you always have to be <span class="u">different</span>, don't you, Johnny?</em></p><p>She'd tried to teach him to play piano—that had been maybe the only constant in those two years of ever-more-intricate mind games—and trying to get his hands to do two different things at once had baffled him at first. Buffy finally standing behind him, right up against his back (which was pretty nice, no denying that), her arms around him, placing his hands on the keys just so and putting her own hands over them. Pressing his fingers down to get the right sequence of notes. <em>See? Like this. </em>She'd done that a lot, till she could get the chords she wanted out of him, his hands were moving but she was the one making the music and if<em> that</em> didn't just about sum up those two years—</p><p>It had been really good in L.A., the most stable job he's ever had and great digs and actually kinda having it together for once in his life, and sometimes he still dreams about the Laurel Canyon house and Buffy and wakes up not really remembering but feeling dirty in some way he can't articulate. Feeling her with him, sometimes, hand-over-hand, and why there's embarrassment attached to that he doesn't know.</p><p>There is one upside to someone bludgeoning you with a kitchen appliance, he thinks: at least when something like <em>that</em> happens, you know what the deal is.</p><p>And the Brubeck is stretching and spindling like taffy and okay, we're not listening to any more jazz, maybe like ever, switching to the AM band produces a slightly-terrain-mangled country station instead and he lets that carry him across into Idaho.</p><p>***</p><p>He vaguely remembers the name Soda Springs from school, something about the Oregon Trail and gold-rush stuff. He'd planned to stop just long enough to get gas and some kind of fast food, and he manages the first. Admittedly the way he'd jumped when a rickety station wagon full of loud farm kids in cowboy hats and parkas had suddenly pulled up to the other side of the pump had been jarring, but now he has at least 150 miles' worth of fuel and an Idaho map too just in case.</p><p>The disorientation and dizziness come up in a big slow dark wave just a few blocks further down the street, and he pulls into the first public parking lot he sees, a supermarket with big snow piles bunched up around the lampposts. He parks away from them, so he can see clearly out all the windows, and is just <em>gone</em> before he's even sure what's happening exactly<em>.</em></p><p>Eventually dull pain in his neck and shoulders drags him back into consciousness, and he finds himself slumped awkwardly against the cold window and the light lower outside. It's after 3, a good chunk of daylight hours this time of year gone, and if he slept or passed out or whatever that was why does he still feel like death on a cracker?</p><p>He goes in the supermarket to get warmed up and awake before continuing—that big arm-waving animatronic Santa at the entrance could scare children, who thought that was a good idea? Bad fluorescent lights and a drawn-out tinny "Jingle Bell Rock" on the loudspeakers and nothing about this feels real, wandering up and down the aisles feels like spacewalking, only held to everything else by the slightest of tethers.</p><p>He buys a few things—cornflakes, tins of sardines, orange juice, things that'll keep in the cold, he doesn't like how the food situation is eroding his cash and this'll save on stopping besides. He only realizes as he's back in the van, eating slowly and feeling his head clear out, that hey, yeah, this is the combination Mom used to get when they were low on money because Dad had done the magic trick of turning paycheck into beer again.</p><p>"Well, beer has nutrients," he says, "it's just that he wouldn't <em>share</em>." And that actually makes him smile, gotta find the humor in things when you can, folks.</p><p>***</p><p>Further west, the landscape shifts: low crenellated mountains striped with snow, strings of alien-looking oval clouds floating above them in the darkening sky. Lots of ranchland, barbed wire running endlessly along the road and the occasional sheep or cattle staring dopily. Little clumps of buildings sometimes, pinprick lights just starting to come on, yellow sodium and tiny bunches of Christmas color. At least he'd sent Laurie's Christmas present before all this happened. Probably no snow where she is, Seattle doesn't get that much. One thing about all this, Boise's a lot closer than Denver, maybe once things are settled he could visit if Paula's in a good mood, Laurie will be grown up in another five years and he can't figure out how it got to this point.</p><p>The last time he'd seen his father alive, three days after turning eighteen, there'd been escalating shouting for days (but no more threats to send him to juvie, had the man realized he couldn't do that anymore given the legal adulthood happening, was <em>that</em> why he'd been so pissed?) It had been so loud that night that the neighbors must have heard, but by that time nobody noticed any ruckus coming from the Caravellas' place anymore. The old man throwing a chair into the corner and screaming curses, and the weirdness of...just suddenly bolting...out the back door, up into the scrubby woods, there was a gas station with a payphone a half-mile away and he could call Paula to pick him up because this was just about fucking <em>enough</em>.</p><p>Emerging on the street on the other side of the hill and the Studebaker suddenly screeching up in the dark, the old man exploding out of the driver's side and half-tackling him, a blur of flailing limbs and stinging punches and clothes tearing. The silence of it because you can't yell if someone's got the drop on you like that, being shoved into the back of the car with your nose in the peeling upholstery, your hands held down and you twist around and<em> kick</em> and he's stumbling back with his hands over his face and blood running down onto his ripped shirt and you scramble out the other door and run back into the woods.</p><p>He'd crept through backyards to reach the station, and Paula, thank God, had come and gotten him. There'd been an amusing few months of her and her mildly scandalized housemates helping him sneak in and out so the puritanical landlord wouldn't notice a guy living there, before they'd moved out to someplace where no one cared.</p><p>Paula had been his lifeline, and all those fractured years later Buffy had been too, in the beginning anyway, and then he'd been Pam's, and maybe one person being the other's lifeline isn't exactly a solid basis for a relationship. Something to remember if he ever dates anyone again, probably, though right now that seems about as likely as flying to the damn moon.</p><p>***</p><p>Down into a valley and a flurry of lights and buildings—Pocatello, according to the rock station he can suddenly pick up switching back to FM—cars floating past, dreamlike, Strawberry Alarm Clock humming rose-pink out of the speakers and is the passenger-side one starting to blow out? There's a weird vibration there. It's not long before the highway opens up into darkness again, sort of a relief, maybe he's not up to driving in cities anymore. Though after L.A. he should be able to handle anything. Paula had said that everyone in L.A. was cognitively smothered because of all the smog, and he had to admit all their brains did seem to fall out when they were driving.</p><p>The sky's very clear out here, roughly one billion stars and the fuzzy arc of the Milky Way. You definitely couldn't see <em>that</em> in L.A. A thin little curve of new moon sails over the shadows of low hills. It's <em>really</em> dark out here, actually, did he accidentally go off on some county road or—he slows down enough to fumble the dome light on and peek at the map. There's a big reservoir along here and a green oblong following the highway for miles, some sort of park, that explains it.</p><p>Jimi Hendrix comes out of the radio, jangling road-cone-orange, and he relaxes into it for a second before the vocals start and it's "Crosstown Traffic," and those lyrics are way too on the nose, that's going off. Cigarette and cold coffee, the bitterness settled at the bottom, and the whir of wind and tires on the road and even if the pain is starting to creep back again he's feeling slightly better than before. He wonders what the mountains around Boise are like. That had been one of his favorite things about Denver, mountains that could make you feel small but in a good sort of way, the same way this sky does.</p><p>Another half-hour and he's yawning despite the coffee, and the pain is crossing the threshold between annoying and Definitely a Problem. Another peek at the map and the next town is still at least forty miles off, forget it. He starts watching the sides of the road for someplace to pull over for the night that doesn't involve going off-road and risking the tires.</p><p>Just as he's thinking he might have to turn off into the nearest flat spot and hope for the best, there's an actual turnoff and something blocky and pale and ghostly to the right. A little careful bouncing over some potholes, and the headlights are sweeping across rusty gas pumps and a sagging awning and a crumbling whitish building with boarded-up windows. He drives around behind it—it just feels better to be out of sight of anyone on the road. He doubts anyone would care that he's here, but he doesn't want even the smallest chance of a cop or someone else nosy spotting him.</p><p>Especially now that he's about to be under the influence of the sort of painkiller he might've taken for fun in the Laurel Canyon days. Not a moment too soon, either, just moving around enough to reestablish the bed-nest makes him wince and hiss slightly.</p><p>He opens the sunroof shade so the light will wake him in the morning, takes the pill, and burrows down into the blankets. It's a relief to finally not be upright anymore. He lies as still as he can, taking small painful breaths of cold air and looking up at the gleaming sugar-spill of stars. If he heads out at a reasonable hour tomorrow and doesn't have any more weird gray-outs, he should be in Boise by late afternoon. Find someplace to stay for a night or so, just to get cleaned up and call the KVAC guys. He's supposed to start Monday afternoon, but the station manager had said to come in on Sunday just to get his bearings with the setup—</p><p>Something flickers in the window above him, and he blinks and no, it's just the still stars, except—<em>there</em>, a quick streak of greenish-gold light. Then another, and another, and hey, Mother Nature's laser light show, a thousand chances to make a wish. He should remember that turn of phrase, maybe he can work it into a show sometime if there's a meteor shower coming up.</p><p>The pain is starting to ease. He concentrates on slow breathing and the glittering darkness, one or two bright lines of meteors carving from southeast to northwest every few breaths. Funny that it should be so quiet. He knows why that is, of course, but still you'd think part of another world traveling through space for maybe millions of years, only to hit this world's atmosphere like a wall and blaze into dust, should at least get a sonic boom.</p><p>His last thought before his consciousness blurs into darkness: <em>Does it still count if you wish on one that actually makes it down in one piece?</em></p><p>***</p><p>This time the moment of remembering after waking comes before he even opens his eyes. The mental equivalent of a nausea stomach-lurch, he thinks, and concentrates on the feeling of the mattress and blankets as he slowly settles back into his own head.</p><p>Eventually he unfolds himself and carefully makes his way into the front seat, cursing a little when something hurts particularly bad. As if his head and hand and side aren't enough, his lower back is starting to bitch too, probably from all the sitting. Aspirin washed down with muddy coffee dregs makes him cough.</p><p>He slowly eats some handfuls of cornflakes out of the box, looking out at the watercolor kaleidoscope of the sky. The orange juice has semi-frozen into slush, requiring some slurping—this would be great with vodka, he'll have to remember that for when he has a place and a fridge again.</p><p>"Screwdrivers: the nutritious and pleasantly sedating start to your day," he says into the jug like it's a mike. Not bad, maybe he can use it on the air if the KVAC folks have a sense of humor. It's 10 a.m., later than he'd like, but maybe he'd needed the sleep. He still feels a little displaced mentally, but a bit more alert. <em>Unbeing dead isn't being alive</em>, e.e. cummings had said that and it was true, but this isn't a bad moment to un-be dead in.</p><p>Once the aspirin has taken as much effect as it's likely to and the wheezing heater has melted the frost off the windows, he maneuvers the van around the potholes and back onto the highway. In daylight the landscape out here is flatter than he'd thought, low and scrubby with a thin powdered-sugar coating of snow. Farmhouses and barns in the distance sometimes, and occasionally a semi or rust-spotted pickup blowing by in the other direction, but otherwise so still it makes you want to stop and just lie down in a field somewhere and disintegrate in the wind—</p><p><em>Okay, we are shutting down THAT line of thought with some tunes. </em>His own mental voice, not the other one, thank whatever powers that be for small favors. Though they'd both have to be his in a manner of speaking, right?</p><p>Scrolling the dial produces country, gospel, country, and—ah, here we are, that fucking Gary Glitter song again but it's better than nothing. He sure hopes it drops off the hit list soon, he's not up to finding excuses not to play it, and hey, he'll need a new on-air handle, won't he? Something different than the usual. Sid the Id, maybe, or -- nah, Professor something-or-other sounds snappier—</p><p>The radio segues into familiar, glowing sunlit chords that take him a second to place. It's America, "Ventura Highway," soft and rhapsodic about the California coast, and he looks out at the desolate snowy landscape rolling away forever around him and laughs.</p><p>***</p><p>Both the Snake River and the bridge across it outside Twin Falls are, frankly, terrifying. It's enough that the river gorge exists, the scrubland suddenly dropping away into this scalloped-edge chasm, but crossing it on a delicate rusty spiderweb makes him white-knuckle the steering wheel and stare straight ahead and very deliberately not think about how high up this is till he's across.</p><p>Twin Falls itself blinks past in about ten minutes, the highway already opening up again among intermittent clumps of buildings. A truck stop is huddled around the next exit, and the gas gauge is lower than he likes and he turns off here.</p><p>It's quiet—a couple of big rigs and a couple of cars in the lot, Christmas lights blinking wearily among sagging tinsel in the building's windows. The wind's picked up, with that little edge in it that promises more snow, making the Greyhound sign over the entrance creak.</p><p>It's even more blessedly quiet inside. Little diner through the door on the right, a couple aisles of junk and trucker gadgets and the register on the left, the unmopped-for-ten-years clone of every other stop out there except for the little glassed-in spot with a few chairs where people wait for the bus.</p><p>The restroom mirror actually shows progress. The hat hides the stitches—can he get away with wearing it at the new station?—and the bruises are moving well into deep yellow, like ripening squash. Disappearing, a little magic trick you don't have to think about. There'd been a poem in one of the magazines Pam had brought home once, something about the war, <em>the nights disappear like bruises but nothing is healed</em>—God, he's going to have to do so much shoveling over all this, isn't he, disappear all of it because you can't hold it and look at what happened all at once and still be able to get up in the morning. Blink and you've got a new name, new home, new job, and hey, having a coherent personal narrative is overrated.</p><p>So are cornflakes and sardines, and he's got time for a little break. A quick detour into the diner nets him coffee and fries and a couple of burgers, Americana in a greasy paper bag, he thinks. No one objects to him sitting in the bus waiting area to eat. The only other person in here is a girl in a grimy coat, slumped over with her arms wrapped around a backpack, half-asleep.</p><p>The sign on the wall declares this the Boise-SLC-Laramie-Cheyenne-Denver route, ticket prices in red, and speaking of money, how much does he have left minus the cost of this next tank of gas? Even with the coffee and food his mental math is failing him. Enough so he won't have to sleep in the van every night between now and that first paycheck, that's something. Food-wise, though—he puts the other burger back in the bag with the remaining fries, it can be dinner.</p><p>After fueling up, he pulls the van into one of the lot spaces. His back is already twinging again. He gets out and leans back against the van to smoke, just to be upright a little longer.</p><p>"Excuse me—"</p><p>He jumps and yelps and hey, it's just the girl from the waiting area, backpack slung over her shoulder, wide-eyed and her hands up in a little stop-gesture.</p><p>"Sorry, man," she mutters.</p><p>"Hey. S'okay." Apparently his startle reflex is working overtime again, <em>that's</em> just lovely.</p><p>The girl looks down at the pavement and grinds the toe of her sneaker into it, hands stuffed into her coat pockets. "Um, you got a cigarette?"</p><p>He fishes one out and hands it over, and she murmurs "Thanks," and starts feeling around in her pockets. Just as he's about to offer her a light, she extracts a battered Zippo from her backpack's side pocket. Her face is mostly obscured—round pink-lensed sunglasses and a lot of scraggly brown hair—but he can see a relieved smile bloom right after she takes the first drag.</p><p>"These things are a bitch, aren't they."</p><p>It's not a question, it's a statement, and he nods. "Yeah, after I finish this pack, it'll be the sixth or seventh time I've quit."</p><p>"I still gotta work up to my first." She spews a little jagged cloud of smoke as she talks. "But sometimes you gotta have <em>something</em>, y'know?"</p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>She looks up at him, first his face and then his bandaged hand. The sunglasses make her look kind of like a praying mantis. "What happened to you?"</p><p>"A...very pissed-off, very sad person with a blunt object." Yep, he'll definitely need a good cover story, and soon, but there's no point lying to someone he'll never see again.</p><p>"Wow." Another little cloud of smoke spews out. "Bummer."</p><p>"You said it." <em>Hey...wait, am I being hit on by a truck stop hooker?</em> He sure hopes not—that would be ridiculous beyond words, and besides up close there's no way this girl's legal.</p><p>"Um—" The girl hitches her backpack up over her shoulder again. "Hey, which way you headed?"</p><p>"Boise."</p><p>"Oh." She slumps slightly, looking out at the pumps.</p><p>"Where you headed?"</p><p>"I got friends in Laramie." She sucks in smoke like water in the desert. And then she pushes some of that hair back over her shoulder with her free hand, and on her neck, is that shadows or dirt or—no, those don't fan like a spread of fingers.</p><p><em>Oh, I think I know the name of this tune, and it ain't "Take Me Home, Country Roads." </em>"How old are you?"</p><p>"Si—eighteen." And she knows he heard that slip, and he knows she knows he heard it and—</p><p>"Hey, I...gotta hit the road, but—you want some food?"</p><p>"Sure." There should be a word for that particular type of trying to look nonchalant, he thinks.</p><p>"Hold on." He climbs back into the van and shuts the door, so she can't see inside. A little rummaging in the glove compartment turns up a pencil. He tears off a piece of the envelope Laurie's god's-eye had come in, the same envelope the rest of his money is hidden in, where no thief would look.</p><p><em>You're not actually <span class="u">doing</span> this, are you?</em> The serrated voice has that same little note of contempt Buffy had been so good at.</p><p>He ignores it—he's feeling weirdly distant again, like being one step back from everything—and tries to remember what the sign inside said. Fishes out a twenty and scrawls a note: <em>Just use this for bus ticket to Laramie, faster &amp; safer, good luck.</em> Folds the twenty up in it and puts it in the grease-spotted bag and crumples it shut again before he can think about it any more.</p><p>The window sticks as he rolls it down and holds out the bag. "Here. Just—go back inside to eat, huh? You're gonna get frostbite."</p><p>"Hey, thanks!" And her grin is wide and crooked and he gives her a little wave before rolling the window up again and starting the van. He watches her go back into the building before pulling out.</p><p>His cigarette is curling up a little alligator-cloud smoke plume from the ashtray. Once he hits the straightaway on the highway, he stubs it out. The windshield is reflecting the god's-eye on the dashboard again, against where gray sky meets gray-white scrubland. Good decisions are not his specialty, haven't been for years now, he shouldn't have done that but for him it's a couple more nights sleeping in the van, whereas it could take literally days for some ratty little road kid to hitchhike that far and—</p><p>A big green sign whips past on the right: MOUNTAIN HOME 86 BOISE 125.</p><p><em>Everything back there is done, we're gonna forget it and keep driving.</em> Trying not to think of Laurie. Trying not to think of running through those woods years ago. Thinking of some good lines for an afternoon drive-time show. Thinking of being a meteor that somehow makes it down in one piece.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The poem Johnny is remembering toward the end is "The Asians Dying" by W.S. Merwin. The meteor shower is the Geminids, which peaks around Dec. 13-14 every year.</p><p>Is the Other Voice in Johnny's head the unpleasant guy viewers would eventually know as Rip Tide (3x13)? I think he probably is.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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